Different VPN products are emerging every day, but in the end, the usability is narrowed down to “securing our data from the third-parties.”
All the VPN products provide data encryption and commitments of safeguarding all the information that passes through their network.
However, there are a few who stand apart and above the others.
So, what makes them different from others? And why are they called the top players of the VPN technology?
The answer is the idea, efforts, and skills that they implement in their products. A product can only attract the user if it at least owns one out of three above mentioned characteristics.
Some even own all of them.
Here, at VPNCrew, we have reviewed several products that protect the users’ data with the help of the virtual private network.
It was astonishing for us to find the extra measures that these VPN products have taken so that privacy could be protected and at the same time, it won’t affect the use of the device.
In our list of the best VPN providers, you will be provided with the information about the VPN applications that offers unique attributes which may not be offered by any other product.
These are judged with different aspects, and one out all the criteria is the specialty of that product that one may not find in other products.
1. NordVPN: The Most Responsive Customer Support
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From the year 2012, NordVPN is making attempts to safeguard the privacy of the users who wish to access the internet, free from restrictions. They have generated a user base of a million users in their journey, and that shows that the company’s efficient VPN clients are good enough to trust.
The company is located in the Panama City, Panama which doesn’t take part in any surveillance program like the secret agencies of Fourteen Eyes country. Also, the government does not have any strict data retention laws.
It’s tough to establish five thousand plus servers around the globe, and what’s tougher is to maintain these servers. They have servers for particular requirements, and also provide the option to connect with two servers at one time (double VPN feature).
Their P2P optimized servers are beneficial for file sharing purpose, and if you do not wish to share the provided IP with other users, you can always go and purchase a dedicated IP.
The user interface constructed with calming colors, and interactive elements is also a major attribute of NordVPN.
Features such as CyberSec and customized kill switch are also added to make the users’ experiences more efficient and secure. CyberSec is used to enhance the browsing experience by blocking unwanted advertisements which appear on the screen whenever you visit a website. CyberSec also saves your system from malicious software programs that may get installed while you conduct surfing.
Customized kill switch option provides the flexibility to the user to choose that through which applications, data flow should be stopped while connecting and reconnecting to the server.
Their customer support is of high quality where the executes are available all the time, ready for your help whenever you have any issue. With the warming courtesy level, they know how to earn long-lasting, loyal customers.
2. PureVPN: Highly Specified Server Sorting
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The company is one of the oldest players of the VPN game which is located in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is no near to the United States or to any other country which is the part of any surveillance program. Someone may assume that there could be some dominance of China, but the truth is that Hong Kong has a completely different and independent jurisdiction which is not influenced by China’s government.
Five different server modes which are actually the different server lists are made available to the users.
These server modes: Stream, Internet Freedom, Security/Privacy, File-Sharing, and Dedicated IP are present to make it easier of the user to identify the perfect server.
These features are provided by other VPN providers also, but PureVPN has purely done it better than them. For streaming, they provide a specific channel list through which you can connect with the channel directly without worrying about the server location.
Also, they can be sorted out according to different cities and countries which help to connect with server letting them visit specific geo-restricted content.
Other additions such as Ozone and Gravity enhance the data security by safeguarding unwanted third-parties to let their hands on our data.
They have also added sharing options such as VPN hotspot and port forwarding. By using VPN hotspot, you can utilize the VPN in the devices which are connected with your device. Port forwarding provides remote access to the device.
Such features allow the user to connect many devices with VPN even if there is any limit on the number of simultaneous devices.
3. ExpressVPN: The Efficient One
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If one starts using the ExpressVPN, he will come across the professionalism maintained in the application. Every information is provided under distinct tabs which deliver ease of use.
Even though the company is headquartered in British Virgin Island, it doesn’t come under the Fourteen Eyes as it’s not a part of the United Kingdom, but a British Overseas Territory. That’s why the user doesn’t require to worry about the data retention laws as the data is safe from the government. If we talk about hackers and cybercriminals, they are taken care of, by the efficient ciphering technology.
They offer high security with AES encryption which comes along with various protocols. In ExpressVPN, you can connect your device with various protocols: OpenVPN (TCP and UDP), SSTP, L2TP, IPSec, and PPTP. That provides the flexibility to the user by which he can decide the level of security and speed that he requires.
The company’s servers are all over the world (148 server locations in 94 countries) which can be selected from the three different options: Recommended, All and Recent. Also, the client provides a built-in speed test which delivers the information that which server would be the best for you.
The number of platforms for which the company provides the client are good enough for a general user who wishes to install ExpressVPN on various devices. Everything looks perfect as one gets instant customer support with elaborated replies.
Although they don’t offer any free-trial, the customers get a thirty-day money-back guarantee. You can take its advantage anytime if you are not completely satisfied with their service.
4. CyberGhost: Exceptional User Interface
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Crossrider Company owns CyberGhost which is headquartered in Brussels, Romania. In these last seven years, the product has built a huge userbase, maybe by tempting the customers by using its “cute ghost” theme.
CyberGhost’s user interface is a signature attribute, tough to find in any other VPN provider. The UI does the branding for itself by attractive layout housing advanced features and server options.
For maintaining the name in one of the top VPN providers, one needs to deliver ease of use. From the separate server list available for streaming and torrenting, you can easily select the needed server.
Features placed under “Connection Settings” are added to safeguard the user from malicious websites by blocking them. They even block advertisements and unwanted trackers which may harm our privacy.
Although they offer a lesser number of servers for Asia in comparison of Europe and North America, they strive to maintain a good user-server ratio with the help of their three thousand plus servers.
If the pricing is concerned, the three years plan provides a major relief where the user only needs to make the payment according to $2.75 per month. By making it available for a great price, it makes its room amongst one of the cheapest VPN deals.
5. Surfshark: Truly Unlimited!
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One thing you may like about the Surfshark is their support for Unlimited Connections. This is rare among providers nowadays. The best part is, you can pay for three year’s subscription and that allows you unlimited devices for as low as $1.99/mo.
Some other factors to consider this product is their Multihop (aka double VPN) support and high level military grade encryption. A while ago, we reviewed this product and we received nearly 75% of original speed which is indeed great.
CleanWeb featured offered by the company allows you to easily block the malicious or otherwise annoying ads with just a click. Similarly their Whitelister allows to bypass or block specific apps or websites from using the network.
Ever since we came across the company, we realized that they are continuously trying to upgrade the products by keeping users in mind. And you easily can see that by using the product.
6. Perfect Privacy: Extraordinary Privacy
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This Swiss product has been beefed up with all the possible security measures one can think of and maybe even beyond that. NeuroRouting, TrackStop, cascading, and multiple level kill switch are some of the feathers in its cap when it comes to security.
The Swiss jurisdiction allows the service to have a 100% no logs privacy and features such as having a warrant canary add to the user’s trust in the product. Even though it comes with only two protocols that are OpenVPN and IPSec, the strong 256-bit encryption and multi-level firewalls don’t leave any safety loopholes unchecked.
The service is currently available only for the major platforms (Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, Linux and, routers). There are no dedicated clients for other platforms, and the users need to take the help of routers to have a VPN cover for the rest of devices running on different platforms.
They have servers across 23 different countries, and they leave no stone unturned when it comes to informing the users about each aspect of the server.
The user gets to know the bandwidth available, latency report, DNS location and other similar sorts of information about the server. This helps the user to make an informed decision when it comes to choosing a server in the absence of an automatic server selection option.
The squid and SOCKS5 proxies help the user to bypass a lot of the regional restrictions and firewalls which gives them access to a more open internet. And the fact that they have servers in countries such as China and Egypt help the case even more.
The service has got something in store for the online gamers as well. The port forwarding available on the client helps the players to find the optimum speeds to thrash the noobs, and it helps with downloading large files with peer to peer connections.
7. ProtonVPN: High-Security Implementations
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This is one more product from the beautiful mountainous country of Switzerland. The makers of this product are related to ProtonMail, which is the among the world’s largest encryption service.
They used all the previous knowledge and experiences from ProtonMail and came up with this ultra-secure VPN service.
Among all the servers in various server locations, they have a selected few, called as the secure-core servers.
The things which make these secure core servers different from the others is that first of all, they are all located in countries where the governments don’t interfere much with the privacy of the individuals. And secondly, the physical security of these secure core servers is also remarkable.
Some of those servers are 1000 meters below the ground, and some have been placed in former military bases.
They ship and install all the hardware for the servers themselves, and there is no third-party involvement.
Perfect Forward Secrecy on the client makes sure that even if a particular session of the user gets compromised, the further sessions take no hit because of it.
Compatibility with Tor adds to the anonymity of the product. Even after all these heavy measures for security, ProtonVPN can give some really high speeds across all the servers in the network.
The service is available for use on all the major platforms such as Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, Linux, and routers. They also seemed to have no interest in saving the user’s personal data, and the Swiss laws also help the cause.
8. ibVPN: Available for Most of the Platforms
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The beautiful city of Transylvania is the home of ibVPN from where every activity is controlled. Transylvania is located in Romania which is free from any data retention laws, and thus, ibVPN is not bound to collect and share user’s data with the government.
ibVPN has nearly covered all the platforms in which one can think of installing the application. Apart from the mainstream platforms (Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, and iOS), the application is also available for smart TVs and gaming consoles.
If one wishes not to use the client, but the specific setup for different protocols then also the option for setting up different protocol GUIs is available for Windows and MacOS.
They even have four different extensions for the most popular browsers.
You can configure them with several routers also.
For every device, they are expected to render high speed as they have provided for our Windows client. However, for a few servers, the speed was not high, but acceptable.
Like the other top players, they also provide server sorting options, which is done by grouping methodology. However, for connecting with the fastest server for a separate group, you need to perform the manual task of selecting it according to your location.
Also, there are seven different protocol for additional security. Use of Stealth VPN could be beneficial for the users who are located in the countries where the use of VPN is banned.
Even if that doesn’t work, for bypassing China’s firewall, they have offered ShadowSocks protocol. However, speed is relatively slow of this protocol.
9. Astrill VPN: Maximum Features
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Seychelles is not only far from the Fourteen Eyes countries, but also from any other country. It is geographically isolated as a lonely island in the Indian Ocean. It is very unlikely that any VPN provider which comes under Seychelles jurisdiction would have shared its data with the government of their own country or with any other government. That’s why one can purchase Astrill without thinking much about the third-party data sharing.
Astill VPN provides everything under one client. They have added everything that they could for providing the complete user control.
Let’s start with the protocols that they provide: OpenVPN, OpenWeb, WireGuard, and Stealth VPN. These protocols serve different purposes, and their implementation make it easier for the customers to utilize VPN according to the different tasks.
For instance, if you are performing browsing, OpenWeb is best suited for that.
Not just this, but you also get additional settings which appear on the settings window according to the selected protocol.
Other options are related to security such as DNS leak prevention, IPv6 leak protection, and WebRTC leak protection. These features add to the security provided by the application. You can also change the level of encryption by changing the key length if you are concerned about the security.
One can also find options such as split tunneling, site filtering, ad blocker, and proxy settings which increases the functionality of the application. By this user experience is enhanced, and this is done without any loss in the simplicity of the user interface.
Providing such a huge number of features may lead on malfunctioning, but on such event was noticed in the Astrill VPN’s case. Instead of that, what we experienced was the high speed that the application delivers irrespective of protocol that you select.
10. Buffered VPN: Immense Speed
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This VPN service hails from Gibraltar, which is a British overseas territory, but the relationship is very complicated.
The client does not strike as a remarkable one at the first look, but the speeds that the user can get from this service is very impressive.
We recorded some of the highest speeds when connected to the closest server available for us which was 97% of the original speed, and as good as the initial speed as well. It was not a one show wonder with high speed on the closest server.
We consistently got speeds more than 80% on the rest of the servers as well. The service is one of the fastest ones that we have ever come across when it comes to internet speeds, period.
The speeds don’t compromise with the security on the service. The user gets the OpenVPN protocol along with 256-bit encryption. This is at par with what all the prominent VPN provides cater to the users.
All the major platforms such as Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, Linux, and routers are compatible with this service. The freedom to use the service on any number of devices comes as an added bonus at such high speeds.
The swift chat-support on the service is also one of the best ones that the users can get. The 24/7 live chat handles all the customer queries in a very professional manner, and generally, all the issues raised by the customer are addressed as early as possible.
11. Mullvad: Extreme Anonymity
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The company doesn’t know who you are or anything about you except some of the payment information and the time when the account was made.
Not even the email address is required to create an account for using Mullvad.
For creating an account, a simple task of human verification is required. After that, your account will be created, and a key will be provided.
That key will remain valid for three hours, and if you make the payment, the validity will increase according to the period for which payment is made.
For maintaining anonymity, they even provide the option of cash payment. They will not be having any details about you. Although the company is located in one of the fourteen eyes, it can be still concluded as one of the most secure VPN providers.
If we go through the other features of the application, they have not rendered a user control. You need to connect with the server manually. According to our experiment, it is better to connect with the geographically closest server as it provides the fastest speed.
Perhaps, for maintaining the anonymity, they do not offer any live chat support or ticket generation. However, they provide enough information in their guides and FAQs which render the solutions for most of the issues.
Even after this, the issue doesn’t get solved; you can contact them anytime through email, and except their reply on the same day.